Sun, air, water and soil are in most of the clothes we wear. In the era of ecological crisis, this international con- ference aims to investigate the new paradigms of fashion cultures through the four archetypal elements of matter. By doing so, it shifts the attention towards the material and sensory aspects of fashion, features that have been largely neglected by fashion studies over the past for- ty years. This approach fits in the current debate on the‘material turn’ inspired by de-centering the human and re-centering matter and the materiality of things, objects, technologies, and bodies.

The conference proposes to analyse this ontological shift through the redefinition of the substance of fashion andits history. In Western and non-Western cultures matter is conceived as a coexistence of multiple elements following a tradition that includes, among others, the cosmological treatise of Aristotle, the Hinduist and Buddhist medita- tions on the ‘primary material elements’ (mahabhutas), and Jābir ibn Hayyān’s alchemy.

The conference takes place in Venice, a city that emerged from water through a process of significant anthropisa- tion, and in which life’s rhythms and movements histori- cally coexist and are dependent on a critically changing environment.

Danielle Bruggeman was a member of the scientific committee of this conference and moderated the session on activism on Friday March 17, 2023. 

For more information, please visit the website of Università Iuav di Venezia .